Blog posts on Nervousness
How to use your fear of public speaking to be a better speaker
It's normal to get nervous about public speaking. When you stand up in front of people and open your mouth, you're making yourself vulnerable. Public speaking involves risk. So aiming for zero fear is unrealistic. I still get nervous when I have to present in...
Why do you have a fear of public speaking?
From my own personal experience, from working with thousands of people face to face, and from asking my blog readers what they find hardest about presenting, I know that the fear of public speaking is a biggie. And not everyone who suffers from the fear of public...
3 Reasons not to use NLP to overcome fear of public speaking
Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a controversial topic. I started my research for this post with a relatively open mind. I say relatively, because I do have some biases against NLP. Many NLP-trained people spout the nonsense about only 7% of your communication...
Review of top 10 methods to overcome fear of public speaking #2
This is Part 2 of a review of the top 10 methods for reducing the fear of public speaking. In Part 1 I reviewed affirmations and visualization. In this post I explore the use of hypnosis and relaxation training. 3. Hypnosis I have no personal experience of hypnosis,...
Review of the top 10 methods to overcome fear of public speaking #1
There's a ton of internet advice on how to overcome the fear of public speaking. Much of the advice is of the "what worked for me" kind. Or the advice is the first stage of trying to sell you a a hypnosis CD. So how do you decide what advice to follow? In this post...
Mice show that you can overcome fear of public speaking
If you get nervous about speaking in public, the recently published results from a scientific experiment on mice, should give you some hope. The experiment showed that mice that had been trained to feel calm, coped better with stressful situations. The mice were...
15 baby steps to overcoming the fear of public speaking
In the three previous posts (Overcome your fear, No perfect presentation, Seven thinking sins) I have talked about the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach to overcoming the fear of public speaking. I've focused on the cognitive principles on the basis that if...
The Seven Thinking Sins of Public Speaking
In the previous post in this series There's no such thing as a perfect presentation, I looked at how to analyse your thinking and change "musts" or demands" into "goals" and so reduce the pressure you put on yourself. Over the years we've worked with hundreds of...
There’s no such thing as the perfect presentation
Do you demand presentation perfection? It might be stopping you from performing at your best. This graph shows that having a high expectation for your performance will lead to improved performance - up to a point. But when you continue to demand more of yourself,...
Overcome your fear of public speaking the proven way
Advice on overcoming the fear of public speaking is easy to come by. You may have been told, "Just go out there and do it, take every opportunity you can to speak". But you still get nervous. Here's a story from someone who has suffered through just going out and...
